Transfigurations

Welcome to Transfigurations! This blog is intended to serve the orthodox Anglican community and the wider Christian community. We pray that all that is posted here will be faithful to the Scriptures as the inspired word of God, speak the truth in love, edify, bless and transform this local body of Christ, and be an impetus for revival, repentance, prayer and intercession!

Friday, July 31, 2015

Anglican Unscripted Episode 194

Jul 28, 2015Anglican Unscripted is the only video newscast in the Anglican Church. Each Episode Kevin, George, Allan and Peter bring you news and prospective from around the globe. Please Donate - http://anglicanink.com/donate

Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains (PPRM) is a wealthy, multi-state Planned Parenthood affiliate that does over 10,000 abortions per year. PPRM has a contract to supply aborted fetal tissue to Colorado State University in Fort Collins.

In the video, actors posing as representatives from a human biologics company meet with Ginde at the abortion-clinic headquarters of PPRM in Denver to discuss a potential partnership to harvest fetal organs. When the actors request intact fetal specimens, Ginde reveals that in PPRM’s abortion practice, “Sometimes, if we get, if someone delivers before we get to see them for a procedure, then we are intact.”

Since PPRM does not use digoxin or other feticide in its 2nd trimester procedures, any intact deliveries before an abortion are potentially born-alive infants under federal law (1 USC 8).

“We’d have to do a little bit of training with the providers or something to make sure that they don’t crush” fetal organs during 2nd trimester abortions, says Ginde, brainstorming ways to ensure the abortion doctors at PPRM provide usable fetal organs.

When the buyers ask Ginde if “compensation could be specific to the specimen?” Ginde agrees, “Okay.” Later on in the abortion clinic’s pathological laboratory, standing over an aborted fetus, Ginde responds to the buyer’s suggestion of paying per body part harvested, rather than a standard flat fee for the entire case: “I think a per-item thing works a little better, just because we can see how much we can get out of it.”... the rest

Atlantic Writer Thinks Religious Believers Belong in Straitjackets ...If you want to read the rest, by all means click over, but these excerpts are more than sufficient to capture the depth of Tayler’s analysis. I note his article not because I think it’s particularly consequential by itself, but rather because it is indicative of a mindset that distressingly common amongst the leftist elite. From my own life in places like Harvard, Cornell, Manhattan, and Center City Philadelphia, I’ve been struck by the extent to which otherwise reasonable-sounding secularists are consumed by rage and hate at the very thought of orthodox religious belief. You can have a perfectly civil conversation about, say, Putin’s Russia, but bring up Jesus and all bets are off. And professors can be among the worst. In fact, their outright bigotry against Evangelicals is well-documented...

Why Planned Parenthood Can’t Donate Tissue Harvested From Babies ...Federal law prohibits partial-birth abortion, a gruesome procedure in which an unborn baby is intentionally turned to the breech position to ensure that delivery of the body happens before delivery of the head. Once the baby’s head is stuck in the birth canal, the abortionist punctures the skull, evacuates the contents, and the baby is dead.

There’s a good reason this practice is banned—it’s barbaric. Many Americans may not know that the term “partial-birth abortion” is not a medical one but a legal one. And, according to Planned Parenthood doctor Deborah Nucatola, some abortion providers don’t consider it with any seriousness. In her own words, “It’s not a medical term, it doesn’t exist in reality.” What?...

Matt O’Reilly: 5 Points on the Planned Parenthood Video You’ve probably seen the widely shared video of a Dr. Deborah Nucatola, Senior Medical Director at Planned Parenthood, nonchalantly discussing the way Planned Parenthood traffics the body parts of aborted preborn babies. If you haven’t seen it, stop reading, scroll to the bottom of this post, and watch it. Then come back and finish reading. I’ve included both edited and full versions. In response, Planned Parenthood has defended themselves saying that (1) they are only being “reimbursed” for specimens donated for scientific research, and (2) the group that recorded Dr. Nucatola is really a dastardly and dishonest and you shouldn’t believe them. Most people who see the video are horrified, as well they should be, as was I. So, here are five points characteristic of what’s been rolling around my head since first seeing the video...

Police Complicit in Attack on Christians in West Delhi, India ..."Hurling verbal abused against us, about 15 extremists rushed towards me and started to push, kick and slap me, and they tore my shirt and beat me up,” he said. “When one church member, Ranjinder Masih, came to defend me, he was mercilessly beaten up.”

They beat Masih, 36, for about 15 minutes before police intervened, he said.

“The police simply told the crowd that they have beaten us enough, and that they will take us inside the police station now,” Pastor Gill said. “I asked one police officer why they did not intervene when the mob beat us up right in front of the police station. He replied that it was not his duty to intervene outside the police station.”...

A criminal complaint unsealed on Tuesday charges 23-year-old Harlem Suarez of Key West with attempting to use a weapon of mass destruction in the US. Authorities say Suarez came to the FBI’s attention through his Facebook posts praising Isis and containing extremist rhetoric...

U.S. Health-Spending Growth Jumped to 5.5% in 2014 ...American spending on all health care grew 5.5% in 2014 from the previous year and will grow 5.3% this year, according to a report from actuaries at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services published in the journal Health Affairs. In the years through 2024, spending growth is expected to average 5.8%, peaking at 6.3% in 2020...

The Tragedy of iTunes and Classical Music
When the developer Erik Kemp designed the first metadata system for MP3s in 1996, he provided only three options for attaching text to the music. Every audio file could be labeled with only an artist, song name, and album title.

Kemp’s system has since been augmented and improved upon, but never replaced. Which makes sense: Like the web itself, his schema was shipped, good enough, and an improvement on the vacuum which preceded it. Those three big tags, as they’re called, work well with pop and rock written between 1960 and 1995. This didn’t prevent rampant mislabeling in the early days of the web, though, as anyone who remembers Napster can tell you. His system stumbles even more, though, when it needs to capture hip hop’s tradition of guest MCs or jazz’s vibrant culture of studio musicianship.

And they really, really fall apart when they need to classify classical music...

How Driscoll’s Is Hacking the Strawberry of the Future ...At Driscoll’s headquarters, a welcome cart sits by the front door: strawberries, blueberries, and raspberries, along with tongs and cocktail napkins. There’s another platter in the conference room and yet another in the recently renovated company kitchen, where exposed beams and pipes float above wooden tables. Employees serve as the first taste testers for new varieties that Stewart and his team create. “I don’t think there are too many days I don’t have berries,” says Soren Bjorn, who manages Driscoll’s business in the Americas, helping himself to some in the conference room. “We have well over 100,000 internal taste tests a year.”...

The New Episcopal Church: What Hath General Convention 2015 Wrought?

The Anglican Communion Institute has followed with care and interest the decisions of The Episcopal Church’s (TEC’s) General Convention 2015. We have pondered key aspects of these decisions, and spoken to a range of participants and members of the broader Anglican Communion.

In summarizing our reflections, we note that the following things are clear:

1. A Trial Rite for same-sex marriage (A054) was passed in the House of Bishops a) without a roll call vote and b) without a majority of all the Bishops entitled to vote, as prescribed by the Constitution. By this action, the plain sense rules agreed to by all in the form of Constitutional order have now been reduced to whatever decision General Convention agrees at the time.

2.The scriptural texts and the plain language of the Book of Common Prayer Pastoral Office for the Celebration and Blessing of a Marriage are now subject to a generic fallacy: the particular language and logic of one man and one woman are held to be examples of the use of “mankind” to refer to men and women in earlier times. That this is manifestly not analogous is made clear by the necessity of the removal of Mark 10 as one of the central texts to be read at marriage services. Neither Genesis nor Mark refer to “man and woman” as examples of non-generic language meaning “people” or “persons.” So by this canonical action (A036), the character of the Book of Common Prayer rites has been reduced to societal accident and happenstance. It is little wonder then, by this same logic, that the rubrics and core understanding of the sacrament of Holy Communion were only narrowly upheld over against appeals for “open communion.” This is the result of treating the Book of Common Prayer as a kind of smorgasbord of liturgical possibilities: a set of suggestions which each new age’s aspirations are to transform. The need for constitutionally approved measures for altering the BCP is now a former age’s quibble. The rest here.

Even the illusion of the Episcopal Church as its own kind of world-wide Communion—a notion invented to offset the concerns and claims of the Anglican Communion as such, after the consecration of Bishop Robinson—suffered a grievous blow at General Convention 2015. We witnessed the entire bloc of Central American Bishops, on behalf of their dioceses, dissenting from the actions of General Convention in the area of canonical and Prayer Book revision regarding marriage. Where that new development will lead is but one further area of confusion post General Convention 2015.What is not unclear is that all calls to adhere to our historical polity, constitutional governance and the rule of law have been rejected by those who gathered at the last GC. We will now witness a new kind of NEC “Bishop”; a new understanding of the NEC Diocese and its Constitution and Canons vis-à-vis General Convention’s most recent actions; a new conception of the authority of the Book of Common Prayer; a fresh confusion over just how the new A054 will find its footing in conservative dioceses, perhaps only clarified via disciplinary action or social-media campaign and advocacy.

SU professor grafts 'Tree of 40 fruit'

Jul 21, 2015
Sam Van Aken, an artist and professor at Syracuse University, uses "chip grafting" to create trees that each bear 40 different varieties of stone fruits, or fruits with pits. The grafting process involves slicing a bit of a branch with a bud from a tree of one of the varieties and inserting it into a slit in a branch on the "working tree," then wrapping the wound with tape until it heals and the bud starts to grow into a new branch. Over several years he adds slices of branches from other varieties to the working tree. In the spring the "Tree of 40 Fruit" has blossoms in many hues of pink and purple, and in the summer it begins to bear the fruits in sequence—Van Aken says it's both a work of art and a time line of the varieties' blossoming and fruiting. He's created more than a dozen of the trees that have been planted at sites such as museums around the U.S., which he sees as a way to spread diversity on a small scale.

A.S Haley: Nothing New under the Sun-The Three Stages of Error and Its Acceptance

When error is admitted into the Church, it will be found that the stages of its progress are always three. It begins with toleration. Its friends say to the majority: You need not be afraid of us; we are few, and weak; only let us alone; we shall not disturb the faith of others. The Church has her standards of doctrine; of course we shall never interfere with them; we only ask for ourselves to be spared interference with our private opinions.

Indulged in this for a time, error goes on to assert equal rights. Truth and error are two balancing forces. The Church shall do nothing which looks like deciding between them; that would be partiality. It is bigotry to assert any superior right for the truth. We agree to differ, and favoring of the truth, because it is truth is partisanship. What the friends of truth and error hold in common is fundamental. Anything on which they differ is ipso facto non-essential. Anybody who makes account of such a thing is a disturber of the peace of the church. Truth and error are two co-ordinate powers, and the great secret of church-statesmanship is to preserve the balance between them. the rest

Why Planned Parenthood Can’t Donate Tissue Harvested From Babies ...But it is what precedes that “fetal tissue donation” that needs attention. Specifically, does Planned Parenthood regularly flout the federal ban on partial-birth abortion using loopholes? How do they get away with this? Do their patients—the women who apparently choose to donate the “fetal tissue”—know what’s going on in explicit terms?

Federal law prohibits partial-birth abortion, a gruesome procedure in which an unborn baby is intentionally turned to the breech position to ensure that delivery of the body happens before delivery of the head. Once the baby’s head is stuck in the birth canal, the abortionist punctures the skull, evacuates the contents, and the baby is dead.

There’s a good reason this practice is banned—it’s barbaric...

Cognitive Dissonance with Life and Death: Thoughts on Planned Parenthood ...“Modern ultrasound technology produces a more-detailed image of an unborn baby’s features,” reads the photo caption in theJuly 17 Wall Street Journal story. The article explores whether too many ultrasound scans during pregnancy could be unhealthy for unborn children, noting that experts have begun advising women that frequent scans for low-risk pregnancies aren’t medically justified. “Routine scans do not seem to be associated with reductions in adverse outcomes for babies,” notes one study.

Following pro-life Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s announcement of a working group, Senator Joni Ernst and Senators Rand Paul and James Lankford, along with 21 cosponsors, introduced legislation to protect women’s health and defund Planned Parenthood, S.1881. McConnell stated that the Senate will vote on this legislation before departing for an extended state work period next month...

Homeland Security chief Jeh Johnson refuses to call Islamic terror "Islamic," arguing it's "critical" to refrain from the label in order to "build trust" among Muslims.

In jaw-dropping remarks Friday at Aspen Institute's annual security forum, Johnson said the government will call such attacks "violent extremism" over "Islamic terrorism" out of respect for the Muslim community....

May 5, 2015This Christian Pastor and Former Muslim Gives Us An Inside Look Into Radical Islam In Idaho

How I Realized I’m A Conservative ...In one instance, I discussed abortion with a fellow waitress and the bookkeeper at a very hip restaurant where I worked. I said that I was not sure how I felt, that I saw why people wanted to keep it legal, but that it also made me very uneasy that it might be taking a life. My fellow waitress reverted to the now-familiar liberal outraged and offended scream, which is something like the body snatchers from the 1978 sci-fi classic. “WhaaaAATTT!!! Are you in-SANE!!!! You’re a WO-MAN!!!!” There was no further use in continuing the conversation after that. I shut up...

My fellow waitress reverted to the now-familiar liberal outraged and offended scream, which is something like the body snatchers from the 1978 sci-fi classic.

In another instance, one liberal friend earned a teaching degree on scholarship, but found teaching just too taxing. She had received the scholarship because she was a single divorced mother living on welfare. She quit teaching and went back on welfare instead. While on welfare, she owned multiple properties she rented out and a bank account into which she funneled thousands. She spent most of her days playing with her children.

STIs soaring in gay men-UK
The number of sexually transmitted infections being spread in gay men is soaring, according to Public Health England.

Figures for 2014 showed a 46% increase in syphilis infections, 32% in gonorrhoea and 26% in chlamydia...

Snow piles from record-breaking Buffalo storm still melting ...One of the leftover piles is about the size of two school buses end to end, the other a bit smaller. Grayish white ice peeks through, but both resemble earthen berms, because the snow is covered with a thick layer of dirt and even grass.

The swampy surrounding land, though, offers proof it is slowly melting, even in Buffalo, whose reputation for snow is - usually - overblown.

New York state climatologist Mark Wysocki said the dirt cover is insulating the compacted snow, drawing out the time it is taking for the warmth of the sun to reach it. The ground, meanwhile, is heating from below...

Tuesday, July 28, 2015

Third Planned Parenthood video: picking through baby parts with tweezers....

(I stopped watching when the video started showing baby parts in a dish. I have always considered that what happens at Planned Parenthood is pure evil-this video certainly brings it to light. -PD)

LOS ANGELES, July 28--The first episode in a new documentary web series features a woman who once worked in Planned Parenthood clinics describing the profit motive involved in Planned Parenthood’s sale of aborted fetal body parts, and includes new admissions from top-level Planned Parenthood leadership about the illicit pricing structure.

Episode 1 introduces Holly O’Donnell, a licensed phlebotomist who unsuspectingly took a job as a “procurement technician” at the fetal tissue company and biotech start-up StemExpress in late 2012. “I thought I was going to be just drawing blood, not procuring tissue from aborted fetuses,” says O’Donnell, who fainted in shock on her first day of work in a Planned Parenthood clinic when suddenly asked to dissect a freshly-aborted fetus during her on-the-job training.

For 6 months, O’Donnell’s job was to identify pregnant women at Planned Parenthood who met criteria for fetal tissue orders and to harvest the fetal body parts after their abortions. O’Donnell describes the financial benefit Planned Parenthood received from StemExpress: “For whatever we could procure, they would get a certain percentage. The main nurse was always trying to make sure we got our specimens. No one else really cared, but the main nurse did because she knew that Planned Parenthood was getting compensated.”

Episode 1 also shows undercover video featuring the Vice President and Medical Director of Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains (PPRM) in Denver, CO, Dr. Savita Ginde. PPRM is one of the largest and wealthiest Planned Parenthood affiliates and operates clinics in Colorado, New Mexico, Wyoming, and Nevada. Standing in the Planned Parenthood abortion clinic pathology laboratory, where fetuses are brought after abortions, Ginde concludes that payment per organ removed from a fetus will be the most beneficial to Planned Parenthood: “I think a per-item thing works a little better, just because we can see how much we can get out of it.”... the rest

The additional PR firepower reflects the growing pressure on the women’s health organization amid building GOP calls to cut its $540 million in government funding. House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) earlier this week called to halt Planned Parenthood’s federal funding while Congress investigates whether the organization broke a federal ban on profiting from fetal tissue donation. The Senate plans to hold a vote on a defunding amendment from Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and others that is likely to fail...

SCOTUS: Too Much and Too Little

by Rosaria Butterfield
July 2015

On June 26, 2015, the Supreme Court issued the majority opinion in Obergefell et. al. v. Hodges, which consolidated four cases addressing the constitutionality of state bans on same-sex marriage. Led by Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy, the majority found state bans on same-sex marriage unconstitutional. Piggybacking off of the 14th amendment, the Supreme Court made sexual orientation a protected category, analogous to race, using cosmological language about the greater good that comes to all when homosexual sexual relationships are allowed to flourish under the invention of a new kind of marriage. Gay marriage is now the law of the land. This public policy change to the definition of marriage commands a redefinition of personhood.

Arguments by analogy always lose something in translation, as apples and bicycles don't have nearly as much in common as their proponents think. And ever since the SCOTUS decision, all ontological hell seems to have broken loose. Many celebrity Christians have laid down their cards: they reject biblical inerrancy (and really always have) and embrace gay-affirming theology, keeping in step with seeker-friendly visions. A video featuring a medical director of Planned Parenthood trafficking fetus body parts over arugula salad and salmon has gone viral. Christian business owners face gag orders for living vocationally for the glory of God. It seems now that there are two kinds of "Christians": the revisionists who sport a "high regard" for scripture with a correspondingly dreadfully low literacy of it, standing proudly with their rainbow flags on the right side of history, and the rest of us bigots on the other. We seem to have entered some Orwellian nightmare, where the wages of sin is no longer death, but a false and misleading travesty of grace. This might even make one long for the good old days when worldview conflicts involved atheists.

Of course, I have no right to complain.
The blood is on my hands.
For a decade, I lived as a lesbian who advanced the cause of gay rights.
The world we see today is the one I helped create.

In 1996, when DOMA was first passed, I grieved with my people. And today, after the Supreme Court has made gay marriage the law of the land, I grieve with my people.

I am also a scholar of the 19th century, a whole-book-history-of-ideas former professor of English (who now only professes from the homeschool table). And like others of my ilk, I know that sexual orientation is an invented category of personhood. Indeed, even from the old feminist perspective that I sported back in the day, I knew that sexual orientation as an identity was a category mistake. the rest

Monday, July 27, 2015

‘Largest Public Satanic Ceremony in History’ to Take Place in Detroit; Meanwhile, over at the Episcopal Church…

Nuclear Iran: Is the U.S. Really Suicidal? ...America will be now marginalized, as will its allies. What is in store for America is obvious to anyone listening to the hate speech of Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. He keeps promising that he will continue fighting against America and Israel, and that Iran will neither stop its nuclear development nor surrender...

Organizers are billing the event as the “largest public satanic ceremony in history,” despite the fact that its secret location will only be revealed to ticket-holders and attendance is strictly controlled. Tickets go for $25 for ordinary seating and $75 for those wishing VIP treatment, including the chance to be photographed seated on the Baphomet monument.

A spokeswoman said that funds from the event “raise money to support Satanic Temple campaigns such as our reproductive rights legal action fund.”...

The Rev. Juan Andres Quevedo-Bosch, 59, the archdeacon of Queens and rector of the Church of the Redeemer in Astoria, announced over Facebook last week that he got married in a Los Angeles church.

The Cuban-born prelate was pictured on a beach with the caption: “I’m in Miami Beach with my new husband. God is good.”

One churchgoer said many parishioners severed ties to the church after Quevedo-Bosch came out as gay at the pulpit a month ago.

“Most of the people aren’t coming anymore,” the elderly woman said. “Because he’s homosexual, people have stopped coming.”...

The Flesh Made Word: Tattoos, Transgression, and the Modified Body ...Body modification is always a cultural signifier because the body is the site of our views about what a person is (or should be) and how that person should (or should not) behave. There are reasons why we modify our own bodies, and there are reasons why social groups pressure their members to look a certain way. Societies generally want conformity (and stability) from their members, but individuals within social groups often seek to highlight their difference and individuality.

If practitioners of body modification want the freedom to see their bodies as expressions of their individuality, then they must also accept that others might freely express their disapproval. In a world where we’re encouraged to rank, review, promote, “like,” or retweet every meal we eat and item we purchase, why should someone else’s aesthetic choices, however quixotic, be free from our relentless, instantaneous rush to judgment?

Our current approach to body modification—haphazard, arbitrary, and driven almost entirely by individual preference—is not without its own risks. By embracing modification as personal preference, we avoid wrestling with some important questions: What is the meaning of the body? Is it something sacred, a temporary gift that we have a responsibility to use well? Is it a bequest from God, or nature, for which we bear responsibility?...

Douthat: Looking Away From Abortion
In an essay in his 1976 collection, “Mortal Lessons,” the physician Richard Selzer describes a strange suburban scene. People go outside in the morning in his neighborhood, after the garbage trucks have passed, and find “a foreignness upon the pavement,” a softness underfoot.

Looking down, Selzer first thinks he sees oversize baby birds, then rubber baby dolls, until the realization comes that the street is littered with the tiny, naked, all-too-human bodies of aborted fetuses.

Later, the local hospital director speaks to Selzer, trying to impose order on the grisly scene. It was an accident, of course: The tiny corpses were accidentally “mixed up with the other debris” instead of being incinerated or interred. “It is not an everyday occurrence. Once in a lifetime, he says.”

And Selzer tries to nod along: “Now you see. It is orderly. It is sensible. The world is not mad. This is still a civilized society…

About a century ago, Margaret Sanger, the founder of the organization, created a journal called Birth Control Review. In it, she published numerous papers on the need for purifying the race through selective breeding and culling. Some of the titles included “Some Moral Aspects of Eugenics” (June 1920), “The Eugenic Conscience” (February 1921), “The Purpose of Eugenics” (December 1924), “Birth Control and Positive Eugenics” (July 1925), “Birth Control: The True Eugenics” (August 1928). From her own childhood experience, Sanger believed that overpopulation was the source of most societal ills, writing that she “…associated poverty, toil, unemployment, drunkenness, cruelty, quarreling, fighting, debts, jails with large families.”

The Daily Record reports that Nitschke, also know as Dr. Death, combined carbon monoxide and nitrogen gases to create a deadly potion that’s delivered through nasal prongs. He’s also hosting a show to demonstrate how the device works at the popular Edinburgh Fringe art festival in Scotland.

Nitschke explained, “When the machine is used to end a person’s life, it uses nine per cent carbon monoxide with 91 per cent nitrogen. Having nasal prongs or a face mask delivering 100 per cent nitrogen, as will happen in the show, will have no effect on a person. But the audience will see a cardiac trace of the individual’s heart. I don’t doubt that there will be some fluctuation in that trace because it’s quite an emotive experience. Even just feeling the flow of gas into a person’s nose.”

Nitschke calls his device, “Destiny” and says it allows patients to take their own lives without assistance...

Don’t Pray About the Book of Mormon
...This means we should NOT pray about whether the Book of Mormon (and the Mormon religion) is true. Why? Because of this reason: Mormonism presents a view of God RADICALLY different from that of the Bible.It teaches that God is a created being who was once a man who became God and that we ourselves might one day become gods. It teaches that God the Father has a wife in heaven. It teaches that Jesus is a created being and the brother of Satan. It teaches that God the Father, once had a God Himself before He became a God, like all the other Gods before Him and that this is the way things have always been–God became a God, and His God did the same thing, and His God did the same thing, and His God did the same thing, etc. (How many gods exist in Mormon theology? A LOT! Even if Mormons claim to only worship one, their view of God is a RADICAL departure [see James White’s excellent article] from the Bible, which teaches that there is only one God in all of existence for all of eternity who exists in three persons (Father, Son, Holy Spirit).

Thus, I would argue that we should NOT pray about the Mormon religion and the Book of Mormon. This is because Mormonism teaches a view of God that is contrary to the Bible.Instead, we ought to submit to God’s voice in the Scriptures and adore the one true God in all of existence. If someone claims to speak a revelation about God we must test it according to God’s Word (the Bible) and if it contradicts it, we ought to reject it. Any person who teaches a view of God contrary to the Bible is a false prophet...

America's Marines Singing "Days of Elijah"(I saw Robin Mark in concert last evening at North Syracuse Baptist Church and he mentioned the Youtube video of marines singing his signature song...awesome! -PD)

Friday, July 24, 2015

Brit Hume on abortion

Thursday, July 23, 2015

Locked out LA Episcopal church growing

From the Parishioners of St. James the Great Episcopal Church, Newport Beach CA

Dear Members of the LA Diocese:

July 19, 2015 marks the 3rd consecutive Sunday the St. James the Great congregation has worshipped outside our sanctuary. While we dodged the rain by a few hours our ‘Mass on the Grass’ was hot and humid with little shade.

Meanwhile, the perfectly usable and unsold, St. James the Great property remains empty, locked and unavailable to us. As the bishop enjoys his month-long vacation none of the support promised to us by him has materialized. Forgive us if we feel that Bishop Bruno and his loyal staff have declared open season on our congregation.

To date, we have received no communication, no cooperation and no support from any of the several communications sent to Diocesan COO David Tumilty, the bishop’s appointed liaison to St. James the Great. Despite having written commitments based on the only meeting with Bishop Bruno on June 9, nothing promised has materialized. The appointed diocesan representative that makes her way down to the church once a week claims she has attempted to contact. Rev. Cindy but not a single call has been received.

This week the St. James the Great website was taken over by diocesan leadership through its control of the “Digital Faith Network.” Fortunately, we control our own website and are able to speak the truth without censorship. While we are able to bring forth the truth, we wonder how many websites are controlled by the diocese. Under the current leadership, they think they can sell your building, seize your bank account, your phones, your computers and your website and even manipulate others to access your payroll; all the while keep your personal items locked in the building with no communication. It’s called a hostile takeover in the corporate world but the church is stuck in the middle ages and believes this is acceptable behavior.

Yet, our priest and congregation continue on. We have been fortunate to find homes to have choir and chant practice, our hospitality team still serves amazing food at our coffee hour, and outreach programs continue amidst this storm. We do wonder however, while the bishop is on vacation, who is minding the store? Where is our ‘local’ Suffragan Bishop? Why hasn’t she attended one of our outdoor services as other clergy have? Silence everywhere. the rest

Wednesday, July 22, 2015

PS22 Chorus "I'm Gonna Love You Through It"

Jul 21, 2015PS22 Chorus shared a special moment with one of our friends and favorite teachers, Mrs. Adriana Lopez, who was recently diagnosed with breast cancer. This song was suggested by Ms. Lisa for our dedication to this strong and inspiring woman, and it's hard to imagine a more perfect selection...

Local reports suggest at least nine pupils were burnt to death when the insurgents stormed the Kamouna village in northern Cameroon. The bodies of the children were later found in a bush. At least 23 people were killed in all during the attack...

Crushing dissent in the name of tolerance
..."We were able to see through her testimony that this case, more and more, is really about the plaintiffs wanting to force Kim Davis to issue a marriage license despite her sincerely held religious beliefs," the attorney explains. "It's not about the plaintiffs' desire to get married."...

The stunning case involved an elaborate operation orchestrated by federal and local agents who smuggled phony heroin, cocaine and methamphetamine through Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport for distribution nationwide...

The U.S. Federal District Court said the Rankin County School District violated a 2013 court settlement that ordered the district to stop “proselytizing Christianity.”

Under the order, the Rankin County School District must now pay a student plaintiff $2,500 for the prayer and another $5,000 because the school district allowed Gideons International to pass out Bibles to fifth graders in October 2014...

A.S. Haley: The Rout (not Rule) of Law

July 21, 2015

I am an attorney, licensed to practice law in California (and also to appear in a number of federal courts, including the United States Supreme Court). As such, I take an oath to uphold the Constitution, and I take the oath seriously.

The Justices of the Supreme Court take two oaths upon entering their lifetime offices, which you may read here. Suffice it to say that each Justice undertakes "to support and defend" our Constitution, and to "faithfully and impartially" perform the duties of their office. After the 5-4 "decision" last month in Obergefell v. Hodges, there is a legitimate question as to whether Justices Kennedy, Ginsburg, Breyer, Sotomayor and Kagan any longer respect their oaths.

Are those strong words? They are intended to be. Consider just this fact:

Well before the Obergefell case ever came to the Supreme Court, both Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Justice Elena Kaganofficiated at same-sex marriage ceremonies. Yet neither of them saw fit to recuse themselves from deciding whether same-sex marriages must be imposed on all States under the Fourteenth Amendment. They simply ignored the request to do so, because it was filed not by a party to the case, butby amici curiae ("friends of the court", who may offer advice, but are not actual parties).

How does the Justices' insistence on participating in the decision reflect any impartiality in the matter whatsoever? Their minds were already closed on the subject.the restimage

When all three branches of the national government show such contempt for the rule of law, one might expect anarchy to result, but instead (because of the powers already vested in them) we get Animal Farm. The resulting elitism of those within the Beltway turns our country's founding principle on its head.

Monday, July 20, 2015

The Liberal Theory of Justice Doesn’t Support Abortion; The Protohomosexual...more

The Amazon Smear
Ryan Anderson’s new book Truth Overruled: The Future of Marriage and Religious Freedom now has 157 comments at the Amazon page. The average rating in the “Customer Reviews” section is 3.5 stars out of 5, a score that would cast it as a middling effort in ordinary circumstances.

But then, we have to wonder why it has received so many reviews at this point, especially as the only edition to be released so far is the Kindle version. (The paperback won’t be available until August 31.) Also, note that not a single one of those 157 ratings is a 3-star. Apart from two 2-star judgments and three 4-star judgments, we have 97 5-stars and 55 1-stars.

The polarization has an obvious source: a polarizing topic. But that doesn’t explain the abundance of extreme opinions here. What happened when Truth Overruled came out was a simple case of smear. Within a few days, dozens of commenters piled on with insult...

The ProtohomosexualWhy are so many straight people pro gay? Because the normalization of homosexuality is the premier achievement of heterosexual ideology. “Gay” and “straight” are not taxonomies but ideologies. They are not orientations but disorientations: whether bi-, homo-, or hetero-, hyphenated sexuality makes us lose our sense of direction toward the truly sexual, and the victims of such ideology are children.

The words “homosexual” and “heterosexual” are nineteenth-century neologisms made to sever romance from responsibility and sex from fecundity. “Heterosexuality was made to serve as this fanciful framework’s regulating ideal,” writes Michael Hannon, summarizing Foucault, “preserving the social prohibitions against sodomy and other sexual debaucheries without requiring recourse to the procreative nature of human sexuality.” The myth has become fact, and that is why so many straight people are pro gay. Homosexuality ratifies heterosexuality.

The very principles and practices that aid and abet homosexual ideology only validate heterosexual ideology: cohabitation, no-fault divorce, sterile sex, the exultation of romantic love, the trite story of the couple who rebels against the world so they can ride off into the sunset together, the assumption that children are a lifestyle option, even a purchasable commodity through adoption and in vitro fertilization. Heterosexuality, I would argue, is in fact protohomosexuality...

The Liberal Theory of Justice Doesn’t Support Abortion ...But where the Rawlsian “original position” really falls apart for me is on the question of abortion. Practically, the only true “original position” isn’t in some hypothetical realm, but in the womb. And the first choice we would all have from behind the veil of ignorance is to be born in the first place.

Which brings me to Deborah Nucatola, senior director of “medical research” at Planned Parenthood, the Wal-Mart of the abortion industry. Nucatola was caught on video haggling over the market price for fetal body parts. (Planned Parenthood would prefer it be called the “reimbursement” rate.)...

Turkey: Suspected ISIS suicide bombing kills at least 27 An explosion outside a cultural centre in the Turkish town of Suruc near the border with Syria killed at least 27 people and wounded many more on Monday, in what senior officials said may have been a suicide bombing by Islamic State militants...

Ink - Written by Hand(I have dabbled in calligraphy in the past, mostly addressing wedding invitations as a wedding gift-a few times for payment. I am generally too impatient for other crafts, so this is a relaxing and creative alternative. -PD)

What’s Technology Really Doing to the Bible?

Three reasons Bible engagement is down — and three ways we can change that.

by Rachel Barach
July 17, 2015

Excerpt:
For many of the nearly two billion smartphone users in the world, getting searchable Bible text in their language for free is merely a tap away. Digitization has meant mass distribution in the blink of an eye.

Perhaps even more staggering is that all this Bible reading isn’t happening silently. Bible verses are being shared more than ever on Facebook, Twitter, and other social networks.

It’s no wonder polls show people believe that having the Bible available digitally has helped them read it more today than in years past.

But is Bible engagement actually happening in our digital world?

The truth is, all this digital accessibility, all the hours spent reading Scripture on our laptops and mobile devices, all of these verses broadcast out to our friends via social media may not be having the impact we might expect on Bible engagement and Christian maturity — on our understanding and application of Scripture, on biblical literacy, on our connection to church and Christian community, on our lens for seeing and serving a broken world. the restimage

Families traditionally flock into the streets to pray, shop and celebrate one the most joyful celebrations in the Muslim year, Eid al-Fitr, which marks the end of a month of daytime fasting and is meant to be a time of unity.

But a market, a mosque and prayer ground were all targets for attacks blamed on Boko Haram, a terror group linked to Islamic State...

Poll: Support for Gay Marriage Has Fallen After Obergefell ...Rather than galvanizing Americans into a unified body, the Obergefell decision has left U.S. citizens more divided than ever on the question of gay marriage, after the court itself showed a deep divide on the issue. In an unprecedented move, the four opposing justices each published an independent dissent, leaving a mine of legal reasoning contrary to the majority opinion.

The AP poll reveals that 42% of Americans favor legal gay marriage, while a similar poll carried out last April showed 48% in favor. Moreover, in conflicts between the interests of same-sex couples and those of religious liberty, a majority of Americans (56%) believe that government should rule in favor of religious freedom.

Specifically, more Americans believe that local officials with religious objections should be exempted from issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples, with 49% siding with the exemption and 47% saying they should be obliged to comply with the law. Moreover, an increasing number of U.S. citizens believe that wedding-related businesses with religious objections should be allowed to refuse service to gay and lesbian couples. Whereas in April 52% thought they should be accorded this option, the number was up to 59% in the recent poll....

Obama collecting personal data for a secret race database ...Unbeknown to most Americans, Obama’s racial bean counters are furiously mining data on their health, home loans, credit cards, places of work, neighborhoods, even how their kids are disciplined in school — all to document “inequalities” between minorities and whites.

This Orwellian-style stockpile of statistics includes a vast and permanent network of discrimination databases, which Obama already is using to make “disparate impact” cases against: banks that don’t make enough prime loans to minorities; schools that suspend too many blacks; cities that don’t offer enough Section 8 and other low-income housing for minorities; and employers who turn down African-Americans for jobs due to criminal backgrounds...

Friday, July 17, 2015

The incentive to peacemaking is love...

The incentive to peacemaking is love, but it degenerates into appeasement whenever justice is ignored. To forgive and to ask for forgiveness are both costly exercises. All authentic Christian peacemaking exhibits the love and justice - and so the pain - of the cross. ...John R. W. Stott image

Abortion Apologists Defend the Mother Ship
...The “arguments” on Planned Parenthood’s behalf have been rolling in from all the usual places. Their virtual watering holes have chimed in with a story that is all lined up and squared like it came with instructions.

The Christian-bashing atheist bloggers, the sad little faux feminists who think that abortion is all there is to women’s rights, the nihilist web sites, and, of course, Planned Parenthood’s cable news networks have all repeated PP’s talking points like a chorus line dancing and twirling to the beat in a Broadway show.

The basic line of attack is the same the basic line of attack that Planned Parenthood has used with each of these revelations. They used it when their clinic personnel were shown arranging forced abortions for pimps and human traffickers. They used it when their clinic personnel were shown arranging sex-selected abortions to murder baby girls because the parents wanted a boy, instead. They used it again when their clinic personnel were shown instructing teens on how to practice sadistic sex.

Here, in case you’ve missed it, is the standard line....

The Bad, Worse, & Ugly Media Coverage of Planned Parenthood ...It’s only been two years since the media struggled to even cover the story of Kermit Gosnell, the abortion doctor and serial murderer. After being shamed into covering the “local crime story” by readers and viewers who had requested coverage for years, the media offered a few mea culpas, and promised to improve coverage of the abortion topic and present the issue more fairly.

They have repeatedly failed, whether the story was cheerleading for late-term abortion supporter Wendy Davis, or accurately covering religious Americans opposition to paying for abortifacients.

This story, however, is so big that it is proceeding even against the wishes of the media and their brethren at Planned Parenthood. As the federal government and state governments prepare to truly investigate Planned Parenthood’s chop shops, let’s hope coverage improves mightily.

According to Faith J.H. McDonnell of Philos Project, the Rt. Rev. Julian M. Dobbs, bishop of the Diocese of CANA East (Convocation of Anglicans in North America), revealed that part of U.S. foreign policy during an interaction with the State Department’s Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration (PRM). Dobbs made his case to the State Department on behalf of a group of Assyrian Christians who are desperate to leave northern Iraq.

“There is no way that Christians will be supported because of their religious affiliation,” the State Department said...

1 in 3 10-Year-Olds Access Porn
...According to research presented by Ernie Allen, former president and CEO of the International Center for Missing & Exploited Children, the average children sees pornography for the first time at age 12. One in three 10-years-olds and 53 percent of 12 to 15-year-olds access internet pornography.

Layden said, "What information is it feeding them? It is telling them this: There is no such thing as too much sex and there is no sexual behavior that is harmful, toxic or traumatizing, and that sex is not about intimacy, caring, love or respect."

She continued, "[It is teaching them that] sex is not about marriage or having children. Sex is casual, recreational, adversarial and it is non-intimate. In fact, you don't even need to know your partner because sex with strangers is the best and most intense time for sex, and you can see the consequences of that in hookup culture on our college campuses."...

Thursday, July 16, 2015

Albert Mohler: “A Lot of People Want Intact Hearts These Days”-Planned Parenthood, Abortion, and the Conscience of a Nation

July 15, 2015

Excerpt:
But Planned Parenthood is having a hard time keeping its story straight. Eric Ferrero, vice president of communications for the national organization, acknowledged the transfer of fetal organs and tissues, but said that it was all legal and insisted that “there is no financial benefit for tissue donation for either the patient or for Planned Parenthood.” And yet, a public relations firm supporting Planned Parenthood, also put out a release stating that “the transcript indicates that Deborah Nucatola was speculating on the range of reimbursement that patients can receive after stating that they wish to donate any tissues after a procedure.” Well, which is it?

Planned Parenthood stands at the epicenter of the Culture of Death and receives almost half a billion dollars a year in government support. They are not going to be able to explain this video away.

I have no reason to believe that the video is anything less than totally credible. But, even if Planned Parenthood somehow finds a way to evade justice in terms of criminal activity, the part of the video that Planned Parenthood does not –and cannot — deny reveals their senior medical director enjoying a conversation over a meal in which she describes tearing apart the bodies of unborn human beings in order to get the desired organ: “I’m gonna basically crush below, I’m gonna crush above, and I’m gonna see if I can get it all intact.”

When the Allied forces liberated the concentration camps of the Nazi regime, General Dwight D. Eisenhower ordered the ordinary German citizens of nearby towns and villages to walk through the camps and to see what they had allowed and facilitated. Eisenhower’s point was all too clear — you allowed this to happen, and you share the guilt.

So it is with all Americans. Planned Parenthood and the abortion industrial complex are funded with our tax dollars. Planned Parenthood’s founder, Margaret Sanger, was a racist openly committed to eugenics. Millions of unborn babies have died in its facilities. The group thrives because Americans allow it to thrive.

When this video went viral yesterday, I waited to see how the mainstream media and abortion supporters would respond. That response has, for the most part, been exactly what I expected — defend Planned Parenthood at any cost.

But the video is out there, and it will stay out there. There is no way to un-see it once it is seen. Full essay

“What happened today makes a bad deal even worse,” said Jay Sekulow, chief counsel of the American Center for Law and Justice. “We will now focus our attention on convincing Congress to reject this deal.”...

“We will be introducing a U.N. Security Council resolution perhaps as early as next week,” a senior administration official told reporters in a background conference call from Vienna, hours after the final agreement known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) was announced.

The official said the resolution wording had already been drafted in Vienna, with the U.S. in the lead... lawless

Book review: Praying the BibleTim Challies: The heart of Praying the Bible is Whitney’s instruction on a particular method that is meant to address the lack of variety in our prayers: “When you pray, pray through a passage of Scripture, particularly a psalm.” That’s it. “Simply go through the passage line by line, talking to God about whatever comes to mind as you read the text. See how easy that is? Anyone can do that.”

He describes this method and then teaches it with very practical instructions. The book’s tone is of a wise, older Christian coming alongside a young one and saying, “Let me teach you what I have learned. Let me teach you how to pray.” It is warm, conversational, and very encouraging. Whitney’s long experience with this method, coupled with his enthusiasm for it, makes it seem both good and do-able. If you read the book, you will walk away knowing and being able to practice his method. I think I can just about guarantee that much. I also think you will walk away excited to try it out and confident that it will bring new life to your prayers...

Most high school students do not realize China’s role in the Cold War and most have little overall knowledge of the Cold War. This is especially disturbing because many historians are asserting that the Ukrainian crisis has led us into Cold War II. Moreover, former Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev declared to Time Magazine that the United States and Russia have already entered into a second Cold War over the past few months...

How Should Christians Comment Online?
Reading people’s comments online is an interesting and sometimes troubling study in human nature. And reading comments by professing Christians on Christian sites (as well as other sites) can be a discouraging study in applied theology.

The immediate, shoot-from-the-hip nature of comments on websites and social media is what can often make them minimally helpful or even destructive. Comments can easily be careless. That’s why we must heed Jesus’s warning: “on the day of judgment people will give account for every careless word they speak” (Matthew 12:36). This caution makes commenting serious business to God.

Tuesday, July 14, 2015

Planned Parenthood: How Much Longer?

July 14, 2015
by Jonathan Parnell

Excerpt:
Mind-changing momentum is beginning to build, and to our surprise, it’s not so much from the direct work of pro-life advocates, but from the unmasked mishaps of abortion activists themselves. Yes, that’s right. They are going to destroy themselves.

What if, counter-conventional as it might seem, the greatest felt gains for unborn humans will come by the abortion industry’s self-destruction?

Last year there was the Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains reportedly awarded for exceeding their abortion quota. That is to say, in addition to other reports of such quotas, there was a certain number of abortions that the clinic was prescribed to perform and when they surpassed that number they were honored, all of which backfires against the language of abortions as safe, legal, and rare.

Apparently, according to Nucatola, Planned Parenthood’s Senior Director of Medical Services, not only is abortion “safe, legal, and rare,” but it’s a pretty big money-maker if you can keep those heads and livers in tact as you extract the baby feet first. Full essay

Can a Cyber Attack Happen Soon?

A.S. Haley: Charges Filed against +Bruno by Clergy and Parishioners

July 14, 2015

The heavy-handed treatment meted out by Bishop J. Jon Bruno of Los Angeles to the parish of St. James the Great in Newport Beach, as reported in this post, has backfired. Members of the parish, as well as a number of clergy in the Diocese, have joined in filing charges against him which allege that he repeatedly lied and misrepresented his intentions to them, and that he is attempting to sell the valuable property on which their church is located without any appraisal and at far below its market value.

A copy of the complaintis at this link, and an “emergency supplement” is at this link. The names of the signatories have not been disclosed in order to protect them from retaliation until the Disciplinary Board for Bishops can act on the charges. Under the Canons, the charges are reviewed first by Bishop F. Clayton Matthews, the Intake Officer for the Disciplinary Board. If he finds them presentable (capable of being made a formal presentment under the disciplinary canons), he will convene a Review Panel, consisting of himself, the Presiding Bishop and the President of the Disciplinary Board. The latter is a bishop who is soon to be elected for a new three-year term following General Convention; until his successor is so elected, the Rt. Rev. Dorsey Henderson, Jr. will function in that role.

There is a timeline of the Diocese’s and Bishop’s various dealings and interactions with the St. James parish and its Vicar on the Website organized to publicize this affair, www.SaveSaintJamesthe Great.org. Also linked there are a number of letters written by the parish to other clergy in the Diocese and to the Church at large. They detail a scenario of unbelievable ham-handedness and insensitivity which has brought the matter to its current state of intensity. And so as not to be out of character, the Bishop apparently has left on a month’s vacation!

The new charges will add to his recent woes. After the news came out that Bishop Bruno purportedly had arranged a “sweetheart” private deal with a developer—no bids or listing of the property, but just terms worked out with a single buyer who wants to erect a suite of expensive townhomes on the property—he received a letter from the original developer of Lido Isle (the area of Newport Beach where St. James is located), the Griffith Corporation. That letter informed him something he ought to have known already: that the property on which the church stands was gifted to the Diocese for use only for church purposes. Griffith stated that if he went through with the proposed sale, the property would automatically revert back to it... the rest